Because, owing to the enormous surface of him--
in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet--
the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing
atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here,
above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,
bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean!
It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman
has estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships,
with all their guns, and stores, and men on board.
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea,
gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan
or cry of any sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble
came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought,
that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost
monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony!
Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.
Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great
Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock.
Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this
the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou
fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears?
The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear,
the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw;
the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;
he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature?
this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets.
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